5 Minutes with Mike Read, President, Teledyne Marine

Teledyne Marine Group has been a consolidator in the subsea space for more than a decade, today totaling 23 companies. Teledyne Marine’s MTR100 entry is focused on insights on the moves in the market from Mike Read.

As we continue to navigate through a historic downturn in the offshore energy sector, can you give us your view of the market? Where you see opportunity in the coming 12 to 24 months?
We are optimistic on the health of the marine market across all market sectors over the next 12 to 24 months. Our interconnect and instruments businesses are beginning to see the effects of stabilization in what has been a weak energy market over the past few years. Interest in our autonomous subsea vehicles and interconnect for both U.S. and international government applications has been strong with expectation to continue to grow. Finally, due to the aging of U.S. infrastructure and increased demand on the global fish supply, we expect the civil engineering market and aquaculture markets to strengthen over the next few years. Overall, our outlook on the market is positive with expectation of measured growth.

Teledyne Marine obviously has a broad technology offering. But if you could narrow it down to just three, what do you consider the three most significant technological offerings introduced by Teledyne Marine in the last year & why are they your ‘top 3’?
Teledyne Marine has held several successful new product launches between 2016-2017, technologies that focus on providing new capabilities and range of performance, reduced footprints and reduction in price point to expand access across our customer spectrum. For example, we have released a new generation of subsea imaging and bathymetric sonars providing never before seen range and resolution while achieving incredible cost targets. Our depth-rated sonar technology combined with the launching of a 6,000m depth rated AUV supports industry’s drive to explore areas not previously surveyed. Our new Doppler Velocity Log technology offers extended range in a miniaturized frame to enable industry’s move to smaller, lower cost autonomous systems where navigation and positioning are key performance parameters. Finally, we are also very excited about opening new market capabilities with our new generation of explosion proof interconnect, including the world’s first flame proof well head connector.

Looking at your recently announced collaboration with Research Products Development Company (RPDC) at OTC, can you share your thoughts on the importance of such collaborations?
The future of Teledyne Marine is driven by our ability to understand our customer’s problems in order to provide solutions. Teledyne Marine has a strong history of collaboration agreements with our customers across many of our markets. By working together, we provide technological expertise to tackle the most challenging problems our customers face in real-word testing environments. A testament to the successes we have is the customer investment in continuing our R&D partnerships. Across Teledyne Marine, we have a healthy pipeline of customer funded investments in R&D that total approximately $25 million this year. We are very excited about our collaboration agreement with Research Products Development Company to develop technologies for Saudi Aramco and other leaders within the Middle East region, starting with the SWIM-R, Shallow Water Inspection Monitoring Robot.

As Teledyne Marine has continued to evolve, please discuss the strategic advantage(s) that have come to fruition as the various brands continue to meld.
Since Teledyne Marine first formed, the essence of our One Team approach is that, from first point of contact, customers will be aligned with an individual, or team of individuals, who will expertly address all aspects of their current application. With technologies broken into five core segments; Imaging, Instruments, Interconnect, Seismic and Vehicles, our Teledyne Marine sales staff is now able to address not only brand level solution, but turn-key systems and capabilities by leveraging our full range of technology solutions. Our engineering teams are able to leverage expertise across common technologies through our technology based global centers of excellence. With more than 1,600 employees focused on a single Teledyne Marine, we provide a unique customer-market focused mentality to technology development and customer support.

R&D is the heart of any company in this sector. What is the strategy regarding R&D at Teledyne Marine?
Research and Development is fundamental to Teledyne Marine’s continued success in designing revolutionary products. Teledyne Marine invests heavily in internal research and development, as evidenced by our continued portfolio of product launches. At Teledyne Marine, we tightly couple our focus on the customer in every phase of development from concept through product support. We do so through a common engineering process across all of our businesses. The process is driven through customer insight and innovation, providing information to the right people at the right time to ensure that optimal decisions are made with regard to new product development. We have Technology Centers of Excellence located around the world including an Interconnect Center of Excellence in Florida, an Acoustic Imaging Center of Excellence in Denmark, and an Unmanned Vehicles/Platform Integration Center of Excellence in Massachusetts. Teledyne Marine also benefits significantly from a close relationship with Teledyne Scientific, an internally funded Research & Development Center located in Thousand Oaks California.

Teledyne Marine Group
Teledyne Marine is comprised of 23 undersea technology brands assembled by Teledyne Technologies Inc. Teledyne Marine’s technologies are broken out into five categories:

Teledyne Marine Imaging
Teledyne Marine Imaging group develops and manufactures acoustic and digital subsea imaging systems for a variety of application areas including offshore, hydrography, civil engineering, dredging and defense & security. Brands include: BlueView, Bowtech, Odom Hydrographic, PDS, RESON, and new tech in 2018 includes:

• Teledyne Odom Hydrographic launched its next-gen Echotrac E20 singlebeam echosounders: easy-to-use, dual-frequency, compact, robust and fast to mobilize.
• Teledyne RESON introduced 3D MotionScan MBES SeaBat T20 with a 3-operation modes and pan & tilt.
• Teledyne RESON launched the SeaBat F50 forward-looking multibeam sonars in a single and dual-head configuration, operating at 200kHz or 400kHz, depth ratings up to 6,000m.
• Teledyne Bowtech launched a range of IP networkable low light and HD technology cameras.
• Teledyne Bowtech’s LED-K-Series lamp now includes four lumen outputs; 2,100, 3,200, 4,200 or 5,000 lumens.

Teledyne Marine Instruments
The Teledyne Marine Instruments provides subsea and surface sensors that span a range of technologies, including: navigation; ocean currents/waves measurements; CTDs; acoustic communications, positioning and releases; pipe and cable tracking; corrosion monitoring, and more. Instruments brands include: Benthos, Cormon, Oceanscience, RD Instruments, and TSS, and new tech in 2018 includes:

• Teledyne TSS reports high demand for its compact new 660 Pipe Tracker, enabling smaller electrical vehicles to perform pipe and cable detecting tasks; it also rolled out new additions to the Saturn and TOGs family of INS products.
• Teledyne RDI continues to add new features to the its ultra-compact Pathfinder DVL; real-time data, bottom tracking capability, and software enhancements have been applied to the Sentinel V ADCP product line; more to come in Q4.
• Teledyne Benthos added the coastal R500/ReleaseIT to its family of R-Series acoustic releases/deck units; it also announced a new lower cost Compact Acoustic Modem for A-comms and positioning applications with up to 1,500m range.
• Teledyne Oceanscience advances its Q-1250 portable, value-priced remotely operated boat for inland ADCP surveys.

Teledyne Marine Vehicles
Teledyne Marine unmanned underwater vehicles span the operational area from the water’s surface to the seafloor. Teledyne is a one-stop supplier of surface, shallow, mid, and deep water unmanned vehicles and towed systems. Vehicles brands include: Benthos, Gavia, Oceanscience, SeaBotix, and Webb Research, and new tech for 2018 includes:

• Teledyne Gavia SeaRaptor AUV is a survey grade deep water AUV designed to operate at depths up to 6,000m.
• Teledyne SeaBotix SWIM-R is a specially modified vLBV300 with manipulating arm and dual measurement sensor (cathodic protection probe CP) and thickness probe (UT)), an ultra-cavitation spot cleaner, automated navigation package, and tracked crawler designed to perform underwater inspection tasks in shallow water environments up to 100m.
• Teledyne Oceanscience Z-Boat 1250 and Q-Boat 1250 are both single person portable and deployable vehicles for shallow water survey or current profiling.

Teledyne Marine Interconnect
Teledyne Marine Interconnect integrates the resources of multiple Teledyne product lines into a single market-focused organization. It offers a broad portfolio of electrical, optical and hybrid interconnect capabilities. Solutions for these harsh environments include wet-mate, splash-mate and dry-mate connectors, pressure boundary penetrators, cable assemblies, cable terminations, and custom-engineered encapsulation and molding. They are available as stand-alone items, or as complex higher-order solutions that integrate cross-platform technologies into advanced, value-added systems. Interconnect brands include: DGO, Impulse, Impulse PDM, ODI, Cable Solutions, and new tech for 2018 includes:

• Teledyne ODI developed the new FlameGuard P5-200 as a key enabling technology for a 5 kV - 200 A, three-phase dry mate electrical feedthrough system.
• Teledyne Cable Solutions developed a range of National Electric Code (NEC) and Canadian Electric Code (CEC)-approved interconnect packages rated for hazardous locations.
• Teledyne Impulse-PDM has released a 12,000m rated dry mate underwater optical connector.

Teledyne Marine Seismic
The Teledyne Marine Seismic group supplies the world’s marine seismic fleets with submersible connectors, energy sources, source management systems and complex hydrophone systems for geophysical surveys and other marine market applications. Allied contributions from ODI and Impulse add capabilities for subsea electrical and optical connectivity to create Life of Field Seismic systems. Teledyne Interconnect brands include: AGG, Bolt, Geophysical Instruments, RTS, and new tech for 2018 includes:

• Teledyne Real Time Systems (RTS) has released its new SmartPhone D System with an integrated 24-bit digital near-field hydrophone (NFH) system for real-time monitoring of near field acoustics.

(As published in the July/August edition of Marine Technology Reporter)